Archive

I used to be a big Tintin fan, right down to the haircut - so I'll be buying a ticket for Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin, a theatrical version of the classic cartoon strip, which starts a UK tour from Saturday 28th July, kicking off at the Watford Palace Theatre.

Based on the book Tintin in Tibet, Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin follows our hero, his loyal dog Snowy and Captain Haddock as they battle to rescue their friend Chang lost in a plane crash in the high Himalayas. With time running out, and rumours of the Abominable Snowman prowling the peaks, it's a testing time for our fearless young reporter and his friends.

The team behind it have a string of West End successes behind them and the first performance of the show in late 2005 got excellent reviews. So if you're a fan, it might be worth getting along.

Absolute Beginners didn't work as a film, but I have much higher hopes for the theatrical production at the Lyric Theatre in London, which runs from 26th April - 26th May 2007.

The plot stays faithful to the must-read book - a young modernist photographer's take on life on the streets of late 50s West London, played out against a backdrop of emerging racial hatred - and the theatre promises sets that faithfully re-create that late 50s coffee bar vibe.

Interesting event at London's ICA on 21st April - Freak Out, Ethel!, which is described as "an evening of musical mayhem".

What that means in reality is three bands and a play about Syd Barrett. The play is Malcolm Boyle's one-man The Madcap - a journey into the psychedelic underground as seen through the eyes of Syd Barrett, mixing narrative with hallucinatory film, slide projections and Boyle's own interpretations of Barrett's songs.

Along with that, there's live performances from The Amazing World of Arthur Brown, Circulus and The Pretty Things, plus psychedelic visuals from Optikinetics (as pictured).

There's an interesting new theatrical production over at the Greenwich Theatre in London - A Model Girl - which dramatises the events of the Profumo affair in the early sixties.

It's actually a musical, featuring new songs in the tradition of jazz, ska and beat of the era. The storyline tells the tale of how a beautiful girl comes to London, turns the heads of the rich and famous and ends up in the bed of a Minister, in the arms of a Russian spy and at the heart of the downfall of the Government.

The production, written by Richard Alexander and Marek Rymaszewski and directed by Ruth Carney, runs from Tuesday 30th February to Saturday 24th February. See the website for booking details.Find out more at A Model Girl website

Colin MacInnes' tale of the teenager at the turn of the sixties - Absolute Beginners - has already been a novel and a (widely panned) film. And now it's set to be a play, debuting at London's Lyric Theatre.

Details are so far quite sparse, but according to web sources:

"Roy Williams, Soweto Kinch and dance theatre director Liam Steel join forces to create an explosively physical evocation of sexual liberalism, gang culture and racial tension, based on Colin MacInnes' bestseller Absolute Beginners. Set in the summer of 1958 that ends with the Notting Hill race riots, Absolute Beginners paints a vivid picture of London's changing society and the emergence of a style-conscious youth culture, as teenagers blow away the cobwebs of post-war life and create the world anew."

It's down for a run from 26th April 2007 to 26th May 2007 (with an official opening on 3rd May 2007). We'll let you know more as soon as we receive further information. In the meantime, if you haven't read the book, add it to your wants list - it's an essential read.Lyric Theatre website